Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice

Excerpt

“‘Tis God’s Will, Sir, ‘Twill come to us all” says Gerasim, the young servant, about his master’s illness and death in L.N. Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich. The ailing Ivan Ilyich is overcome by not only physical pain, but also spiritual suffering caused by what he perceives as: “other people’s cruelty, and God’s cruelty and God’s non-existence” (Tolstoy 2008). Through simple honesty, acceptance and non-abandonment, Gerasim raises Ivan Ilyich’s body and soul from the depths of corporeal pain and crisis of faith and spirit. This uneducated peasant lad does more for the patient than do his doctors, priest and bourgeois family. Gerasim possesses a natural gift, but for most of us doctors, understanding our patients’ spiritual and religious experience in the context of illness, healing and death is, by necessity, an acquired skill. “Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice” edited by Michael J. Balboni and John R. Peteet is an invaluable resource for physicians, nurses and other clinicians in this quest. …